London: The Bank of England (BoE) has voted to keep its main interest rate on hold, it said yesterday, faced with a weak growth outlook at home and abroad.
The move by the Monetary Policy Committee to keep borrowing costs at 0.50 per cent, where they have stood for seven years, comes a day after the US Federal Reserve also left rates unchanged. “At its meeting ending on 16 March... the MPC voted unanimously to maintain Bank Rate at 0.5pc,” the BoE said. The BoE also maintained the amount of cash stimulus, or quantitative easing (QE), pumping around the British economy at £375 billion ($540bn).
Britain’s finance minister George Osborne said that the country’s economy was set to grow slower than expected this year.